Did you know that sea turtles can detect magnetic fields with such precision that they can steer themselves back to their beach of birth a decade after setting out to sea? Did you know that ants can count? Did you know that bees can eyeball an angle better than I can measure it with a protractor?
I haven’t done many book reviews of late. Book reviews, for me, are not a matter of course. I tend to do them when a book stands out. I just finished a book last night that achieved exactly that.
Furry Logic: The Physics of Animal Life by Liz Kalaugher and Matin Durrani is an absolute joy to read. They cover the merged fields of physics and biology—heat, forces, fluids, sounds, and more—with a solid eye for clarity and inspiring awe. My background as a physicist makes the science immediately understandable to me, but every chapter has a perfect preface that provides what you need to know to understand that every day we should question what it means to be “top of the food chain.”
They cover the furry friends we call pets, like cats and dogs and their moisture retention after a swim, and they delve into the sometimes mysterious world of insects and how they achieve the impossible, like an army corps of engineers every day.
Just one example illustrates the amazing content of this book: Did you know bees can detect electrical charge? Did you know plants are electrically charged to let bees know whether previous bees have landed on them, how long it will take to recharge their nectar, and whether they should move on to other flowers? Bees have senses humans do not seem to possess, creating a simple communication structure that benefits both species. Flowers get to reproduce, and bees get to eat. This blew my mind, but it was not even close to the most amazing pieces of science in this book that illustrate how complicated the structure of our world is.
Filled with examples and historical visionaries of science—some lost to the mainstream over time, but shown in their best light in this book—Furry Logic will make you wonder how many more discoveries, which we couldn’t have fathomed a few decades ago, await us in the future as specialists continue to peel back the layers of biological complexity in our world.
4.5/5.0. Grab a copy today.
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